By David Arnault
I am a foolish man.
I am certain that most people
in the electorate of Bass
had worked that out
long before voting took place.
In fact, I made it clear
right from the beginning
that I was a dreamer … not a politician.
I am a foolish man.
I am certain that most people
in the electorate of Bass
had worked that out
long before voting took place.
In fact, I made it clear
right from the beginning
that I was a dreamer … not a politician.
I dreamt that humankind
was capable of reasoned thought,
that there might come a time
when we looked around our planet
and realised we were on the wrong track,
noticing the oceans full of plastic
being consumed by creatures
who feed the creatures
which feed us,
or looked upon the forests that are cut down
to make cardboard for gadgets we don’t need,
stealing the homes and lives of creatures
that have occupied this land since time out of mind.
We think progress when the soil which feeds us
is covered with concrete.
Is it safe for women to walk down city streets?
Is it safe for women to take a place in the Senate?
Are we not scornful
when we lock up innocent people,
fleeing mayhem and murder,
stealing their hope as well as their lives?
Does no one wonder how it is possible
to have a beneficial education policy
that is chopped and changed every three years,
picked over by misogynists and other angry people?
Is there anyone who has faith in an energy policy
subjected by the whims and thought-bubbles of party strategists
or an approach to public health which starts out
as a plan to gain electoral advantage?
We are no longer part of the solution,
we are part of the problem.
Where is the vision?
But these were not the issues
the electorate was interested in.
They were interested in what was happening
close to the bone:
independence for Phillip Island,
taxation rates for farmers,
public transportation
jobs for their children,
the cost of tertiary education.
The only issue that seemed embraced by all
was the preservation of Western Port and
its protection from industrialisation.
All of the candidates attending the group meetings
were in agreement.
The reds candidate, who was successful,
argued convincingly that we must save the great inland sea,
but she belongs to a party that supports,
deep ports, gas infrastructure, dredging
and generally playing havoc with
all ecosystems in its path.
Western Port means little to the suits in the city
and the successful candidate will be told
to sit at the back and be quiet.
In the helter-skelter of shouting,
and promising to give us back some of the money
we pay in taxes, the reds promised
to raise the railway line in Pakenham
so that cars could move more freely:
not so much a public transport policy
as one to get the voting public more speedily
to and from Bunnings, McDonalds and the pub.
Not to be outdone, two hours after the reds’ commitment,
the blues promised to lower the rail,
that is, below the roads.
It was a thought bubble made on the run
in the lust for power
and completely missed the point
that there’s a swamp down there.
No, the reds are an urban party
and holiday far, far from Westernport.
The blues are an urban party as well.
So are the greens,
all of which gives one an accurate impression
of where the Bass electorate sits
in the thinking on Spring Street.
We all learn stories and in time
these stories form the architecture of our reality.
The Chinese, in ancient times,
were told that the Goddess Nu Wa
created humankind from the earth;
she formed the aristocrats from the fine yellow soil
and she created the poor from brown mud.
We don’t believe that, of course.
We believe … perhaps … god created Adam and Eve
… or our planet is 13.5 billion years old
and humankind evolved from wriggling organisms
living in the tumultuous sea.
But the story that reds and the blues
would have us believe is as far-fetched
as the Goddess Nu Wa, and at the heart of the tale
are limited liability corporations,
which have descended from heaven
distributing manna with the click of a finger;
and these ungovernable corporations
will lift us up to some kind of materialist nirvana
… in Pakenham, apparently,
where the trains will slide silently
on a cushion of frictionless mud.
And when the people cried out
we need hospitals on Phillip Island,
all the parties promised,
we’ll build one for you … don’t you worry about that.
And perhaps they might,
but will it be like the one in Yes Minister,
the one without patients and doctors,
a monument to administrative purity?
We can see more clearly in federal politics
the cost of intractability:
the nation becomes ungovernable,
swinging madly from one whim to the next,
with pejoratives used as wedges
to push us further apart,
but never achieving unity or maturity,
never quite achieving the focus of who we are.
David Attenborough among others
stood up at the global climate summit
and said the collapse of civilisation is looming.
The high school students get it,
but the farmers at the meeting in Grantville,
had little on their mind apart from the rates.
Why weren’t they complaining about the global food system?
The high school kids know the global food system
is responsible for a third of all greenhouse gas emissions:
more than all the emissions from transport, heating,
lighting and air conditioning combined.
Ironically, the changing climate,
which farmers are contributing to,
is damaging food production
through weather events
such as extreme heat, floods and droughts.
Bush fires don’t help either.
The electorate, farmers included, seems to think
these are things that will impact on us in the future.
But the truth is that the warming planet
is already affecting food production.
It’s already affecting health.
It’s already affecting the economy.
And it gets more serious every year.
And that’s why the kids,
who don’t have a vote,
realise it’s their lives we’re putting at risk;
is this one of the reasons why 25 percent
of kids between 12 and 25 cry out in mental distress
every year … yes even in good old Bass?
We still think we’re living in a frontier society
where we hunt and kill and chop down trees.
In the sky, we have only half the number of birds as in 1980.
We’re killing off our native animals faster than we can count,
at a rate greater than any other developed nation.
We’re destroying our forests to make single-use paper.
The forests in Japan are sacred.
That’s why they chop down Australian trees;
they know better than to cut down their own.
Politics isn’t about ideals or vision,
or common bloody sense.
It’s about power and maintaining power
and has no truck with dignity and wisdom.
And the future?
It’ll take care of itself.
So my imagining that this was to be
a contest of ideas was naive.
I would not have won in any event
and I didn’t deserve to: a last minute blow-in
is proof that the Greens
are still an urban party
and will not have a voice in the country
until that changes.
But I have not given up
on the Greens.
David Arnault was the Greens candidate for the seat of Bass in the November state election. He lives in Mirboo North and volunteered to stand when the Greens were unable to find a local candidate.
was capable of reasoned thought,
that there might come a time
when we looked around our planet
and realised we were on the wrong track,
noticing the oceans full of plastic
being consumed by creatures
who feed the creatures
which feed us,
or looked upon the forests that are cut down
to make cardboard for gadgets we don’t need,
stealing the homes and lives of creatures
that have occupied this land since time out of mind.
We think progress when the soil which feeds us
is covered with concrete.
Is it safe for women to walk down city streets?
Is it safe for women to take a place in the Senate?
Are we not scornful
when we lock up innocent people,
fleeing mayhem and murder,
stealing their hope as well as their lives?
Does no one wonder how it is possible
to have a beneficial education policy
that is chopped and changed every three years,
picked over by misogynists and other angry people?
Is there anyone who has faith in an energy policy
subjected by the whims and thought-bubbles of party strategists
or an approach to public health which starts out
as a plan to gain electoral advantage?
We are no longer part of the solution,
we are part of the problem.
Where is the vision?
But these were not the issues
the electorate was interested in.
They were interested in what was happening
close to the bone:
independence for Phillip Island,
taxation rates for farmers,
public transportation
jobs for their children,
the cost of tertiary education.
The only issue that seemed embraced by all
was the preservation of Western Port and
its protection from industrialisation.
All of the candidates attending the group meetings
were in agreement.
The reds candidate, who was successful,
argued convincingly that we must save the great inland sea,
but she belongs to a party that supports,
deep ports, gas infrastructure, dredging
and generally playing havoc with
all ecosystems in its path.
Western Port means little to the suits in the city
and the successful candidate will be told
to sit at the back and be quiet.
In the helter-skelter of shouting,
and promising to give us back some of the money
we pay in taxes, the reds promised
to raise the railway line in Pakenham
so that cars could move more freely:
not so much a public transport policy
as one to get the voting public more speedily
to and from Bunnings, McDonalds and the pub.
Not to be outdone, two hours after the reds’ commitment,
the blues promised to lower the rail,
that is, below the roads.
It was a thought bubble made on the run
in the lust for power
and completely missed the point
that there’s a swamp down there.
No, the reds are an urban party
and holiday far, far from Westernport.
The blues are an urban party as well.
So are the greens,
all of which gives one an accurate impression
of where the Bass electorate sits
in the thinking on Spring Street.
We all learn stories and in time
these stories form the architecture of our reality.
The Chinese, in ancient times,
were told that the Goddess Nu Wa
created humankind from the earth;
she formed the aristocrats from the fine yellow soil
and she created the poor from brown mud.
We don’t believe that, of course.
We believe … perhaps … god created Adam and Eve
… or our planet is 13.5 billion years old
and humankind evolved from wriggling organisms
living in the tumultuous sea.
But the story that reds and the blues
would have us believe is as far-fetched
as the Goddess Nu Wa, and at the heart of the tale
are limited liability corporations,
which have descended from heaven
distributing manna with the click of a finger;
and these ungovernable corporations
will lift us up to some kind of materialist nirvana
… in Pakenham, apparently,
where the trains will slide silently
on a cushion of frictionless mud.
And when the people cried out
we need hospitals on Phillip Island,
all the parties promised,
we’ll build one for you … don’t you worry about that.
And perhaps they might,
but will it be like the one in Yes Minister,
the one without patients and doctors,
a monument to administrative purity?
We can see more clearly in federal politics
the cost of intractability:
the nation becomes ungovernable,
swinging madly from one whim to the next,
with pejoratives used as wedges
to push us further apart,
but never achieving unity or maturity,
never quite achieving the focus of who we are.
David Attenborough among others
stood up at the global climate summit
and said the collapse of civilisation is looming.
The high school students get it,
but the farmers at the meeting in Grantville,
had little on their mind apart from the rates.
Why weren’t they complaining about the global food system?
The high school kids know the global food system
is responsible for a third of all greenhouse gas emissions:
more than all the emissions from transport, heating,
lighting and air conditioning combined.
Ironically, the changing climate,
which farmers are contributing to,
is damaging food production
through weather events
such as extreme heat, floods and droughts.
Bush fires don’t help either.
The electorate, farmers included, seems to think
these are things that will impact on us in the future.
But the truth is that the warming planet
is already affecting food production.
It’s already affecting health.
It’s already affecting the economy.
And it gets more serious every year.
And that’s why the kids,
who don’t have a vote,
realise it’s their lives we’re putting at risk;
is this one of the reasons why 25 percent
of kids between 12 and 25 cry out in mental distress
every year … yes even in good old Bass?
We still think we’re living in a frontier society
where we hunt and kill and chop down trees.
In the sky, we have only half the number of birds as in 1980.
We’re killing off our native animals faster than we can count,
at a rate greater than any other developed nation.
We’re destroying our forests to make single-use paper.
The forests in Japan are sacred.
That’s why they chop down Australian trees;
they know better than to cut down their own.
Politics isn’t about ideals or vision,
or common bloody sense.
It’s about power and maintaining power
and has no truck with dignity and wisdom.
And the future?
It’ll take care of itself.
So my imagining that this was to be
a contest of ideas was naive.
I would not have won in any event
and I didn’t deserve to: a last minute blow-in
is proof that the Greens
are still an urban party
and will not have a voice in the country
until that changes.
But I have not given up
on the Greens.
David Arnault was the Greens candidate for the seat of Bass in the November state election. He lives in Mirboo North and volunteered to stand when the Greens were unable to find a local candidate.